How do you photograph drinks?
Drinks Photography is quite a specialist branch of photography requiring skill and patience to get right, you can split it up into two distinct categories packaging and serves, the packaging is going to be the bottles and serves, the serves being the drink in a glass, with any necessary garnish or ice.
For most drinks photographs, beautiful soft lighting is the key, for bottles I would normally light them with a soft highlight either down one side or both sides of the bottle if the bottle is clear, I would normally put a soft light behind either a Perspex or trace screen.
The same really goes for serves, with drinks photography, although you want to substitute the side light for a top light, again soft, one thing to remember when setting up, a glass or a bottle with liquid in it will look different from an empty glass or bottle, even if the liquid is clear.
How do you photograph cold drinks?
Drinks photography can be challenging when photographing cold drinks, which is a fiddly process, firstly the drink is probably going to need some ice in it, I had a selection of clear ice cubes made years ago by a modelmaker, at a vast cost, they were carved out of thick clear Perspex and polished to a perfect finish in various shapes and sizes the Perspex ice does not float, so it can be arranged in the glass before the liquid is added.
When the liquid is added, usually if you wanted the glass to look cold, you would put condensation on the outside of the glass, this I would usually do by spraying the outside of the glass with a semi-matt or matt wax photographic dulling spray up to the top of the liquid level, this gives the glass a slight matt effect, like hot breath on a cold pane of glass, then to get some fine water droplets on the glass, use a fine atomising sprayer filled with a mixture of glycerine and water. This looks very realistic and lasts for ages.
What camera settings are best for drinks photography?
Make sure you use a small enough aperture to get the whole of the drink and any garnish in focus and don’t forget of there is anything fizzy in the drink, you are going to get bubbles rising, so the shutter speed needs to be fast enough to freeze them.
What is the best lighting for drink photography?
For the backlight always use a light through a trace or opal perspex screen, and a soft front or top light depending on what needs lighting in the glass, sometimes you can get away with just a backlight. I you want a soft pool of light in the background, diffuse the round reflector on your light, with diffusing gel or trace, that will give soft edges to the light coming through the screen.
Bear in mind sometimes you may need to shoot the background and foreground separately, as you don’t want the lighting on one to affect the other, you need to make sure there is no movement in the drink, then when you shoot the front light, you cover the screen at the back with black velvet, then turn the front light off and shoot the backlight on its own, the images can then be put together in photoshop as separate layers, and by changing the blending mode on one layer it will look like it shot in one.
How do you make drinks photography look pretty?
With drinks photography, you have to make sure that the garnish that you are using works with the drink, thinks like lemon or lime slices need to be cut perfectly evenly, and as thin as possible, so that you get light come through the fruit itself, don’t overdo it sometimes less is more.
Also, the choice of glasses is very important, always use the best glasses you can, as generally you will find that they are a lot more elegant the glass is a lot thinner so doesn’t have that thick rim around the edge or distort the contents of the glass.
If you are shooting a lot of cocktails it may be worth using a home economist who specialises in preparing drinks for photoshoots.
I have been fortunate enough to work with some really big brands such as Barcardi, Diageo and Fuller’s Brewery.
How do you capture splashes and pours with drinks photography?
Splashes and pours are very popular in drinks photography pours are relatively easy, it just depends on how much of the bottle you are going to see, if you see a hand holding the bottle, I would just attempt to do it for real, a pour does not move that quickly, and most studio flash units should freeze any movement adequately.
Splashes are a different matter, and it really is trial and error, you need a unit with a high flash speed, usually, the unit needs to be on low power, so you may need to increase the camera ISO speed, and then it’s a certain amount of luck and judgement.
